The Uncle of an Angel by Thomas A. Janvier

Two or three days later Dorothy advanced her second parallel. In the interval they had bathed every morning and had driven to the Point every afternoon, and they had held converse upon the veranda of the hotel every evening until ten o'clock with certain eminently respectable people from Philadelphia, by whom Dorothy was bored, as she did not hesitate to confess, almost to desperation. Further, Mr. Port had given a lunch-party to which these same Philadelphians were invited; and his niece had informed him, when the festivity was at an end, that if he did anything like that again she certainly would either run away or drown herself. Any trials in this world or any dangers in the next, she declared, were preferable to sitting opposite to such a person as Mrs. Logan Rittenhouse, who talked nothing but uninteresting scandal and crochet, and next to Mr. Pennington Brown, who talked only about peoples' great-grandfathers and great-aunts.

It was with a lively alarm that Mr. Port noted these signs of discontent, together with returning symptoms of the grumpiness which had disturbed his comfort and digestion at Saratoga; and it was most selfishly in his own self-interest that he tried to think of something that would afford his niece amusement. Miss Lee, when she perceived that her intelligently laid plans were working successfully, was graciously pleased to assist him.